Interview: Ethan Suplee

Share.

The co-star of My Name is Earl and Art School Confidential.

By Stax

IGN FilmForce recently attended a roundtable interview with actor Ethan Suplee who discussed working on director Terry Zwigoff's latest movie, Art School Confidential, as well as working on the hit TV series My Name is Earl and the forthcoming films The Fountain and Clerks 2. In Art School Confidential, Suplee plays Vince, an obnoxious film student, opposite Max Minghella and John Malkovich. Suplee's send-up of a film snob has generated a slew of rumors that his character is patterned after certain filmmakers he's worked with.

Q: Was your character Vince inspired by Kevin Smith?

Suplee: I don't see how the character could be inspired by Kevin Smith because Kevin's nothing like this guy, but I think this guy could certainly- - Kevin Smith's the most iconic independent filmmaker of our generation, so he probably sees him as he aspires to be a Kevin Smith. But I've worked with Kevin Smith and Kevin Smith is nothing like Vince.

Q: He'd be the first guy willing to send himself up.

Suplee: Exactly. In a heartbeat.

Q: Were you doing Jerry Bruckheimer? You worked with him.

Suplee: I did. I didn't actually have a lot of interaction with him though so I couldn't necessarily base it on any aspect of Jerry Bruckheimer that I observed because I think I had dinner with him one time and that was with the rest of the cast. If I said two words to him, I was lucky. I think he's based on aspects of a lot of people in this town, but nobody specifically.

Q: And film students don't usually make it. Is there anyone you can really look at because they're not successful?

Suplee: I didn't know film students and didn't go to an acting school but I've definitely worked with people that had not kind of as generalized and exaggerated as Vince but certain aspects of him. But obviously, he just wants to get laid and just wants money. That's not going to get him anywhere good but there are definitely people out there with those motives as well as a passion for making movies.

Q: How did you become an actor?

Suplee: My parents [Debbie and Bill Suplee] studied drama in Pittsburgh and then before I was born, they did Broadway shows and stuff and when I was born, they quit acting. And my mom taught drama at a school when I was young. When I was a child, we had two cats named Stanley and Stella because they met in a Summer Stock version of A Streetcar Named Desire. That was kind of all- - they read me plays when I was a kid and so I would say to my mom, 'That's what I want to do, let's do it.' And she would just kind of go, 'Okay, okay,' but not take- - it wasn't like she was- - but then when I was old enough, when I was 16, 17, it was like that's what I want to do, and I realized that I just had to go and do it. So I did. But it was always something I was aware of.

Q: If they taught drama, were you exposed to the acting student types?

Suplee: Not in middle school. I definitely have run into my fair share of the little robots who just smile and have great posture and have their mom who makes everything perfect but not too bad. I didn't run into any beret wearing people looking at their apples or their skulls. It was like 12-year-olds.

Max Minghella (L) and Ethan Suplee (R) in Art School Confidential; click on the pic for a gallery of images from the film.

Q: What are you working on next?

Suplee: I have no plans for the summer. I think I'm going to take the whole summer off. I'm going to go to Africa and visit a friend and then just hang out with my family.

Q: Have you had offers for the hiatus?

Suplee: Yeah, but nothing phenomenal. It's such a weird gap, like four months right in the middle of summer and stuff could be happening now but it already started while I was still working on Earl. I could wind up doing one thing we're talking to people about but I don't really want to talk about it because if I don't &#Array;

Q: How does it feel to be associated with a show that's become a phenomenon?

Suplee: It's pretty cool. The whole motivation for doing television for me was staying in Los Angeles. I'd find myself outside of the country every year for periods of time and not seeing my family. I was in New Zealand, I brought the family down but with film schedules changed, so I had two weeks off and they arrived and the day they arrived the schedule flip flopped and I worked the entire time they were there. I just wanted to be able to be with them more and strangely enough, on My Name is Earl, it's almost the same difference because we work such long hours that I don't see them at all during the week but at least I'm here on the weekend. But it's good. I wouldn't do a pilot hoping that it didn't get picked up, so it's nice to know that we're going to go and do our second season.

Q: Is Randy getting dumber?

Suplee: I don't think so. He might be getting more innocent. But I don't think he's getting dumber. From the pilot to now, there are certain things in the pilot that I would say wouldn't play the same or wouldn't be applicable now. But I thought the other day that as Earl kind of moved more towards his karmic goodness, Randy, any mean spirited-ness he had was washing away with that. So he is becoming I think more innocent.

Q: Was this film shot first?

Suplee: Yeah, we did this before.

Q: How was it shifting from this outrageous character to the innocent?

Suplee: It was fun. There was a huge gap. I think probably close to a year or nine or ten months between doing this movie and starting My Name is Earl so it wasn't even on my mind at that point anymore.